


I'm a thinker, not a talker

by Vicepresidents



Series: this stop feels like a start (tsb ‘verse) [1]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-19
Updated: 2013-09-19
Packaged: 2017-12-27 01:45:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/972851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vicepresidents/pseuds/Vicepresidents
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zayn owns a tattoo parlor. Louis owns a skate shop. Harry owns three different bandanas. But this story is not about Harry. Or about his bandanas. This is about Zayn and Louis and the six inches of space between them in the form of a rolled-up joint.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm a thinker, not a talker

**Author's Note:**

> title from Bloc Party's _Flux_

Zayn hated Wednesdays the most. They weren’t like Mondays that already came with the notoriety for being the token shit-day of the week. He can deal with Mondays. He welcomes Mondays, welcomes them like he welcomes Sunday afternoon hangovers spent groaning at the edge of his mattress because that's what you get for being friends with people whose idea of a relaxing Saturday night is playing Jaeger pong in the back garage until the sun came out.

Mondays are a necessary evil that Zayn has learned to grapple with but Wednesdays are a completely different breed of monster.

Wednesdays are probably what living in purgatory is like. Wednesdays are equally as far from the weekend as they are from the start of the week and they feel like that halfway-point when you reach Fresno during a six-hour road trip up to the Bay where the urge to jerk the wheel and turn back is the strongest because it’s at that part of the drive where the I-5 looks like it just keeps stretching and stretching, the endpoint of the road vanishing into the sunset.

Zayn hated Wednesdays the most. But that was before he met Louis. 

 

 

“No.”

“No.”

“I’m dead sure turpentine won’t work.”

There are a few things Zayn had picked up on in his early days in the tattooing business. One: no one ever called it ‘the tattooing business’ (unless your name is Harry Styles); two: always hand the client consent form _before_ any needle-to-skin action happens; and three: everyone who gets a tattoo on a Valentine’s day almost always regrets it the morning after.

“No, we’d never work on anyone when they’re drunk. We have an in-house breathalyzer for a reason.”

Zayn was in the middle of a rather spectacular display of human dexterity— the shop’s wireless phone sandwiched between his shoulder and his ear, his left foot mopping a wet spot by the bottom of one of the chairs, his hands fumbling at a tattoo gun that kept on leaking ink when you pressed on the trigger too hard. Zayn was going to fire Harry Styles the minute he steps into the parlor, and Zayn will make sure not to look at his stupid face this time so he could actually go through with sacking Harry for once. Friends or not, Zayn acknowledges that Harry is just one of those people who gets their way three times out of four if only for the sheer force of self-belief that they possess. Harry Styles takes yeses as ‘do it until you run yourself to the ground’, maybes as ‘do it anyway’ and no’s as ‘do it as long as no one’s looking’ _._

“Yeah, I’ll let my assistant ring you up with a number for a clinic. Sorry for the trouble,”  _but you did this to yourself_ Zayn doesn’t add as he hung up on his fifth irate customer today.

It’s not even noon so Zayn shouldn’t even be surprised that Harry hasn’t clocked in yet. But as if on cue, just as Zayn’s securing the back screw to the gun he’s been working on, he hears the jangling of bells hitting the glass door of the shop. The sound colors the silent static air that’s been the only company Zayn’s had for the last hour, like a drop of ink feathering into a bowl of placid water. But it isn’t Harry at the door Zayn sees when he peers out from the counter.

“Hello?” a voice from the mouth of Zayn’s shop piped up.

Zayn’s store faces the East because he promised his grandmother one thing on his eighteenth birthday, on the day before he left home to move to the States. He promised her that he’d never forget where he came from, never forget his roots, never forget what she taught him since he was a little boy. So to the East was where his store faced because that’s where Mecca was. The East was also where the sun rose, which Zayn knew, of course, but never took into account. Anyone coming into the parlor before noon looked like they were standing in front of a Klimt painting— outlined in gold but shrouded in shadow; hair bathed in sunlight, face obscured in the shade—so Zayn couldn’t tell who it was standing at the door of his shop.

“The sign’s flipped to _Open_ so I figured I could just come in,” the figure who definitely isn’t Harry turns out to be a brown-haired boy wearing a Marvel Comics t-shirt holding a wad of green fliers in one hand and a white plastic bag on the other.

“Yeah, come on in,” Zayn answered, wiping his hands down the front of his paint-spattered trousers, “You a walk-in?”

“A what now? Oh. No, I’m not here to get a tattoo. My mum would kill me. Never cared for them, really.”

“You’re English?” what Zayn had meant to say was something along the lines of  _then why are you here_ but the word  _mum_ rang in his head and that’s when he noticed.

“I’m from Doncaster. That’s in—”

“Yorkshire,” Zayn finished for him and was rewarded with a smile that crinkled the folds at the corners of the guy’s eyes, “I’m from Bradford.”

“Your accent’s watered down quite a lot. How long have you lived here?”

“Four years this summer.”

“I’m Louis,” he said suddenly, like a child who’s gotten bored and just found a shinier toy to direct his attention to.

“Zayn.”

“You don’t say much, do you?” he— Louis, his mind amends— asked with a squint and a tilt of the head, like it’s Zayn who is the out-of-place one in this situation, like it’s Zayn who barged into his own store and ate away at five minutes of his shift that he could have spent oiling the tattoo chairs or leaving a dozen passive-aggressive messages in Harry’s voicemail.

“Sorry,” Louis said before Zayn could even think of what to say, like Louis was able to read something in the creases of Zayn’s scrunched up forehead, “I only dropped by to hand these out,”

Zayn took the proffered green flier, the pads of his ink-damp hands blotting at the corners of the thin photopaper.

 

**ZAP SKATE SHOP**

**WISHES YOU**

**A**

**HAPPY NOT-VALENTINE’S DAY**

 

“And here’s your not-a-candy-bar,” Louis handed Zayn a granola bar.

“You do know every day that isn’t February 14 is a ‘Not-Valentine’s Day’, right?” Zayn said.

“You’re the first to point that out,” Louis laughed and Zayn is reminded of the tinkling of metal hitting glass when Louis first stepped into the shop, “I was hoping no one would realize.”

“Call me Tony Stark,” Zayn said, flicking a glance down at Louis’ shirt.

“Or Batman. Batman’s smart too.”

“Batman isn’t Marvel.”

“I don’t think you can pull off purple as well as black, mate.” Louis fanned his stack of fliers, using it to gesture at Zayn’s threadbare Misfits shirt and his black trousers, “And that tattoo gun looks like it belongs in Batman’s utility belt.”

“Fair enough,” Zayn smiled.

 

 

Louis set up shop at the corner of the street two doors down from Zayn’s tattoo parlor on the fifteenth of February. Remembering the exact date when  _Zap Skate_ — and consequently one Louis Tomlinson— came to be in his life wasn’t born out of any sentimentality on Zayn’s part. The day after Valentine’s Day was known as the day the number of people who stumbled into tattoo shops, hungover and wearing yesterday’s clothes asking if all tattoos were permanent, doubled in number. And that’s the kind of thing that sticks out in your head.  

February fifteenth of the year when Louis barged into Zayn’s tattoo shop was not a Wednesday. But the subsequent Wednesdays of that year came to be the days Louis and Zayn found themselves spending their days-off together more often than not. Today wasn’t any different from all other Wednesdays, just Zayn and Louis cooped up in Louis’ flat passing the time before Harry gets off work.

“I’ve never done this before,” Louis says.

“It’s alright. Just take the tip, sweetheart.”

Louis takes a deep breath, poised and serious to brace himself, but mid-breath he throws Zayn a glare and Zayn doubles over in laughter, careful not to jostle too much for fear of burning his fingers with the lit end of the blunt he’s holding. Zayn drops it on the wood floor anyway when Louis kicks at him, the rubber heel of his Vans hitting the bare patch of skin peeking through the gaping hole at the knees of Zayn’s oldest pair of Levi’s.

“That’s even worse than when Harry says ‘that’s what she said’ at the end of every sentence when he’s sloshed,” Louis huffs.

They’re sitting at the spot in the corner of Louis’ room closest to the window where they always are whenever they’re at Louis’— facing each other with legs crossed, knees almost touching but not quite. Usually, there was either a stack of comic books in the space between their legs, or a skateboard on Zayn’s lap that he’s been commissioned to add personalized decals to. But this time, it’s just Zayn, and Louis, a six-inch blunt, and the air around them.

Without the distraction of open pages of  _The Exploits of Spiderman_  or Zayn’s colored _Sharpies_ uncapped and rolling about on the floor, Zayn sees the things that would have escaped his notice this Wednesday. Like the way Louis’ eyes are a glassy sort of blue when sunlight hits his cheeks, or the stiff set of Louis’ jaw that usually means he’s either hurt or upset but would never deign voice it out, or the way Louis hasn’t stopped rubbing at the bandage on his otherwise bare forearm since they stepped into Louis’ apartment coming from the tattoo shop half an hour ago.

 

 

Earlier that day, Zayn’s sex dream (that featured this hot tatted-up chick he kept calling Veronica) had been rudely interrupted by sound of the chorus to  _Moves Like Jagger_  ringing longer than it had any right to. He had to blink at his iPhone a few times to focus on what greeted him because if the screen on his phone wasn’t lying, that’s Harry calling on Zayn’s day-off. The last time Harry had rung Zayn up that wasn’t the result of a drunk pocket dial at a club or a plain old drunk dial from wherever he was with his lot of hipster friends was two years ago when his sister Gemma had gotten into a car accident back home.

“Harry?”

“Yes and no,” hearing Louis’ voice on the other line didn’t do anything to placate Zayn’s nerves.

“Is Harry with you?”

“Yeah, he’s just finishing up on a customer,” and that’s when the familiar buzzing sound that was so distinctly the tattoo parlor registered in his ears, “Get out of bed and come to the shop.”

“What’s happened?”

“That’s your worried voice. Don’t use that, it’s too early for that. Get dressed and stop by a McDonald’s then head to the shop.”

“Quit being cryptic. What’s going on?” Zayn let out the breath he was unconsciously holding on to because if Louis thinks there’s time for pancakes, then surely nothing dire is afloat. Nothing more than usual when it comes to Louis and Harry, at least.

“It’s a surprise. Harry says don’t forget the ketchup. Tommo, out.”

Zayn toyed at the urge to fling his phone across the room and burrow back into his blanket. Wednesday mornings are the mornings he could have a proper lie-in and have a bowl of cereal with his first cigarette of the day sometime past noon. Something, though, about Louis ringing him with Harry’s mobile made him sit up and start mentally going through the McDonald’s breakfast menu. Louis would get pancakes, just like Zayn, but with jam as well as syrup and loads of extra butter, while Harry always ordered the Big Breakfast, whether starving or high or neither, because he’d rather ‘be prepared for whatever his tongue craved for’ (his words, not Zayn’s).

“You forgot the ketchup,” Harry muttered, head almost all the way inside the greasy paper bag he snatched right off Zayn’s hand when Zayn had barely pushed the door to the shop open.

“I didn’t.”

“Then why can’t I find any in here?”

“I didn’t forget. I just didn’t want to bring you any.”

“That’s what you get for telling me to ring him up on his day off, Harry.” Louis said, talking around a mouthful of pancake.

“Why doesn’t he get to suffer then?” Harry asked.

“Because Louis isn’t my shit employee slacking off in the middle of a work day.”

“Not slacking off,” Harry said pointing his fork at Zayn that would be a more of a threat if it weren’t groaning with the weight of eggs and sausage, “My next customer isn’t due until 10:30.”

“Yeah, his next customer just needs to finish the rest of his eggs and he’ll be ready,” Louis said, looking at Zayn pointedly.

“You?”

“Me.” Louis beamed.

 

 

Zayn and Louis had left Harry at the shop after. Louis with that same smile plastered on his face all throughout his first time on the chair, but Zayn knew better. And Zayn knew Harry did too when he handed him a small scratched-up old tin of mints and whispered  _go start 420 early, I’ll catch up when I get off the clock._

Contrary to what most people think, not everyone who gets inked for the first time reaches that plateau of pain and pleasure where that small hit of adrenaline is enough to mask the tenderness of raw, abused skin. Zayn did when he got his first tattoo, the tingling on his collarbone barely noticeable what with the full-body high that coursed through him in waves even an hour after stepping out of the dingy tattoo shop under a Pizza Hut along Broadway.

And then, there was Harry.

Harry who dug fingernails into the fleshy underside of Zayn’s palm during his first time. Harry who never let go of Zayn’s hand even as he jumped off the tattoo chair and landed on his feet, gripping Zayn’s fist not anymore because of the anticipation or even the pain of it, but because he needed someone to ground him at that moment. Harry looked like what three consecutive shots of tequila felt— heady and heated and absolutely punch-drunk. 

But now, there was Louis.

Louis whose fingers looked like they were itching to grip the armrests of the chair (but never did) when the sound of the whirr of Harry’s gun started to bounce off the walls of the parlor. Louis and his smile that looked more like a grimace when he thought Zayn wasn’t looking, his smile that didn’t quite make the corners of his eyes crinkle like they’re supposed to. Louis who gingerly got off the chair as Harry tore off the last bit of tape off the white gauze on Louis’ arm and said  _well that wasn’t so bad._ Louis would never cop out to saying he was hurting. So this was Zayn’s way of not helping him, under the guise of his first smoke up telling Louis  _well since you’re all about crossing stuff off your bucket lists, why not smoke your first joint too?_

 

“Alright. Stop dicking about and just take this then,” Zayn says, reaches out and offers Louis the blunt if only to give Louis’ hand something else to do other than rubbing at the white gauze on his forearm like a  wounded baby animal.

“No more blunt-is-penis jokes?”

“No more.”

“Alright.”

Louis leans forward and Zayn nearly fumbles the jay because instead of taking it from between Zayn’s fingers, Louis lips carefully wrap around the end of the blunt. And Zayn knows now that Louis’ mouth is as wet as it looks because when Louis sucks in his first drag, the swell of his lower lip catches against the tip of Zayn’s thumb.

It’s the tiniest bit of contact but Zayn feels like a match being lit, feels the reverberating echoes of the dozens of times it was just him and Louis together on a Wednesday.

The last Wednesday of February when Zayn first stepped foot into Louis’ apartment, Zayn bringing over his meager comic book collection because Louis asked him  _why is Marvel better that DC, anyway?_  The second Wednesday of March when they discovered that the playground by Hilltop Middle was the best place to skate, but only between the hours of noon and 3 PM. The first day of April, a Wednesday, when Louis and him got into a debate over which place it was best to watch the sunset so Zayn piled the two of them into his car and drove down the I-5 to San Diego because there was something viscerally magical about sitting at the edge of Sunset Cliffs watching the cloudless orange sky and the cool blue waters of the Pacific play tug-of-war with the sun, and Louis could only nod with this glazed look on his face when Zayn bumped his shoulder on the drive back up to Santa Barbara.

Zayn rarely gets unsettled by people. He still had the base instinct of an introvert to flee rather than fight when it came to social gatherings such as the occasional house party. But Zayn learned, after a few crippling years of adolescence, that people are mostly made of the same stuff as he is so why be so frightened of a few minutes of small talk with someone who’s pretty much just 70% water?

But Louis is not regular people, is different, and is one of the rare kinds that Zayn’s encountered in his life. The last person to have this effect on him is the person with wild curling hair tempered and tamed by the same black beanie he wears every day, a black beanie that Zayn once owned. It’s the same person who’s holding the fort up four blocks away in Zayn’s quaint tattoo shop and it was a million years ago since he’s thought of Harry that way (actually it’s been two months short of a year, but Zayn does his best to forget because it’s simpler that way).

Louis’ lips leave the blunt and sweep ever so delicately against the pads of Zayn’s thumb and forefinger and Zayn knows this time around isn’t an accidental brush what with the way Louis peers up at Zayn through his eyelashes. Louis holds his breath, just like Zayn told him he should, letting the smoke swirl in his lungs, letting the THC seep into his pores, but Zayn is holding his breath too. Zayn holds his breath because this was the kind of moment that had two outcomes. And the only thing more frightening than not knowing which way to go is realizing how badly you actually want one more than the other.

Louis puffs his cheeks out as he tilts his head up and exhales the smoke in a long draw away from Zayn’s face. And Zayn, for some reason, remembers a time two summers ago when Harry and him hotboxed his car for the first time and Harry blew a bong hit straight into Zayn’s face. Zayn recalls sputtering and coughing and all Harry did was throw his head back and laugh because he thought it was hilarious that Zayn was frowning at him when there was smoke everywhere anyway so what difference would it make where Harry chose to exhale.

“Hmm,” Louis says, “Thought it’d burn down my throat worse than cigarettes, but it’s not bad.”

“Don’t listen to Harry. He steals drags off my cigarette when he’s drunk and he says the same thing every time—”

“I feel like I’m having an asthma attack,” Zayn and Louis say at the same time, catching each other’s gazes, and Zayn feels it again. He feels that niggling itch he never dared to scratch or even prod at for fear of losing not one but two of the people Zayn’s come to associate with the word  _home_.

“What’s shotgunning?” Louis asks, planting his palms on the wooden floor, leaning back and angling his body away from Zayn’s.

“It’s like,” Zayn pauses to think, “Like giving someone CPR.”

“Harry says it’s like playing suck-and-blow without the card,” Louis says and Zayn holds back from asking  _when did he tell you that_ or even,  _did he tell you that’s what I told him the first I taught him what it was?_

The thing is— the thing that Zayn only lets himself think about when it’s five in the morning and it’s all that’s left inside his brain that he hasn’t tinkered with hopes of falling asleep— the thing is, sometimes Zayn wonders about what Louis and Harry get up to when he isn’t around. Like that one weekend he was away for his cousin’s wedding in Sacramento and Harry spent the night at Louis’, or even just the Thursdays when Harry doesn’t need to come to work and usually spends his day off at Louis’ shop where he thinks he’s being helpful when he rearranges the longboards by wheel color.

Harry and Louis caught on like an entire row of townhouses on fire the first time they properly met. Zayn remembers dragging Harry off his bed and asking him to check out the new skate shop on the corner street. By the time Zayn walked on over to pay for a couple of boxes of skate wax, Harry had somehow managed to make his way to the back of the counter and where Louis had him in a headlock, Louis yelling  _you take back what you said about David Beckham._ They hadn’t even exchanged names at that point.

“Hey. Show me, then,” Louis’ voice drags Zayn out of his stupor, “Shotgun me.”

The way Louis says the last two words— hushed and cautious, like he’s treading on thin glass threatening to break— sounds like something else entirely and that’s when Zayn knows. That’s when Zayn is certain that all the thoughts he’s kept a muffle on for the last two months don’t only exist in his head.

“Alright,” Zayn answers with a sure nod and Zayn knows Louis understands what he’s trying to say. He knows it by the upward tilt of Louis’ mouth and the laser-like focus of his clear blue eyes.

Zayn wets his lips and inhales, and somehow it feels like a countdown from the moment the tip of the blunt touches his mouth to when Louis’ face is only a whisper away from his. Zayn blows the smoke out and into Louis’ parted lips, slow and sure and steady, Zayn’s hands cradling either side of Louis’ jaw. It’s hard to focus on one part of Louis’ face this close up, just a haze of eyelashes and pink-tinged skin from Zayn’s line of sight, so it’s easy enough for him to shut his eyes closed. The last thing Zayn sees is Louis doing the same thing.

Louis breaks off first to exhale but Zayn’s hands never leave his face. Louis inches closer suddenly, the last trails of smoke barely leaving his mouth when he plants his lips back on Zayn’s, and Zayn has to let go of Louis’ cheek to plant a hand on the floor and steady them both.

Louis kisses him with a quiet focus that surprises Zayn. He’d expected clashing of teeth with a frantic sort of air borne out weeks of delaying the inevitable, but Zayn was wrong. The only lack of restraint Louis shows is with the iron grip he has on the collar of Zayn’s shirt and the way his other hand rakes through Zayn’s hair like he wants to pull on it. Louis kisses Zayn like he wants to learn every nook and crevice in his mouth, like Zayn is a book he could spend hours poring over, carefully reading each line on every page. It also surprises Zayn how easily Louis’ body slots over his, Louis’ thighs locking and cradling his hips, Zayn’s arm draped in place over the dip of Louis’ back, their heads tilted, mouths barely parting as they kiss and breathe at the same time.

Zayn’s fingers toy with the waistline of the back of Louis’ shorts and when Louis bites at the swell of Zayn’s bottom lip and ruts down on his lap, Zayn takes it as invitation to reach his hand in and leave deep, red fingernail marks on the swell of Louis’ ass.

“Clothes. Off,” Louis says as he fumbles at the button of Zayn’s jeans and Zayn is quick to follow as he sheds off his red henley.

“Shit, sorry,” Zayn says when his fist makes contact with the bandage of Louis tattoo in his haste to pull his shirt off his head.

“Doesn’t hurt anymore,” Louis says, “Marijuana is a wonder.”

Zayn laughs because he’s never seen Louis like this, and saying inane things like ‘marijuana is a wonder’ like he actually means it, not like he’s just saying to get a laugh out of Zayn..

Zayn lies on his back and the stiffness of being pressed against the cool wooden floor is a small price to pay because when lifts his head up and sees Louis, naked and smiling and straddling Zayn’s thighs. Louis’ lips roam over Zayn’s body like he has a map in his head he’s been studying for a while now, like he’s thought about starting with the jut of Zayn’s collarbone as he grazes his teeth over the inked Arabic on the thin stretch of Zayn’s skin. Louis shifts his attention to each of Zayn’s nipples, greets each one with a passing flick of the tongue, trails his lips down his sternum, down the middle of Zayn’s stomach, down to the sparse patch of hair right beneath Zayn’s belly button.

“What—” Louis says when Zayn sits up abruptly and hauls Louis into his arms, “Not a fan of blowjobs?”

“Not as much as kissing you,” Zayn replies and Louis snorts because it sounds like a chat up line. And Zayn knows this too, knows it because he’s used that line plenty of times. Only Zayn realizes he’s never meant it before, not until right now.

Kissing Louis is a different sort of thrill. It feels like being lost in a new city but finding yourself less and less likely to leave as you journey on. Each dip of his tongue, each nip of his teeth feels different from the last.

Louis presses his weight down against Zayn’s chest, his hand cradling Zayn’s neck as he lowers the both of them onto floor. Zayn may be content with trading kisses but maybe Louis isn’t so much when Zayn feels him take both of their cocks in his hands.

“This way we could keep kissing, yeah?” Louis says and it sounds more like an order than a request and Zayn feels dizzy at how the words go straight to his cock.

Louis takes his right hand and licks a stripe up his palm, all the way the tops of his fingers. Zayn groans because it too much to take in— watching Louis’ tongue laving spit on his palm, the feeling of Louis’ fingers grazing at the wet tip of his cock, rubbing gently against the slit.

“Lou,” Zayn warns because he’s been on the knife’s edge ever since Louis swirled his hips and ground down on his lap.

Louis smiles like he knows exactly what he’s doing and Zayn can’t help but surge up just so he could kiss away the smug look on Louis’ face. Louis laughs, or at least tries to, because Zayn’s fingers start playing with the tip of Louis’ foreskin, and Zayn is left to swallow the moan coming from Louis’ mouth.

It doesn’t last long for either of them from then on, what with the slick wet warmth of Louis’ hand stroking Zayn in sure steady motions, and Zayn making a tight fist that Louis just fucks into, hips bucking up in quick short thrusts. Their mouths are never more than a breath apart as they pant curses and each other’s names into the space between their lips and Zayn feels like he’s tearing apart at the seams when he comes, feels like if Louis wasn’t pressed down against him he’d fly apart.

“Air,” Louis gasps when pulls his mouth from Zayn’s and rests his forehead on the crook of Zayn’s neck.

“Air,” Zayn parrots back just to say something, feeling every bit as loose and boneless as Louis looks.

“We should get cleaned up,” Louis says, his breath tickling at Zayn’s ear.

Zayn nods but neither of them move. They lay there for a moment to catch both their breaths heedless of the mess of sweat and come between their bodies. Louis is a warm weight pressed against Zayn, their chests rising and falling in tandem. Zayn absently runs the palm of his clean hand up and down Louis’ back, the smile on Zayn’s face growing looser and looser with every hum Louis lets out when he exhales. And it’s so easy, being with Louis, that Zayn can’t recall why it took them this long to get here; on a heap on top of each other with the sunlight hitting their bare skin and nothing between them but each other’s breaths.

The muffled trilling of  _Moves Like Jagger_  from under the pile of clothes by Zayn’s feet answers his question for him.

“Hello?”

“Where are you?”

“At Lou’s.”

“Oh,” Harry says faintly, “I sent a text saying that my last booking today cancelled, so I’m off. You always answer so I thought something was up.”

“No, everything’s fine,” Zayn replies darting a glance at Louis who’s making his way towards the bathroom.

“You sure?”

“Yeah. We’ll head over to the flat, just need to clean up first.” Zayn bites his lip and feels his cheeks warm, suddenly fully aware of how naked he is standing in Louis’ flat.

“Comic books and Sharpie pens all over the floor?” Harry jokes and Zayn wonders if Harry says this because Louis’ talked to Harry about their Wednesdays.

“Yeah. See you in fifteen.”

“Alright. See you.”

“The loo’s free,” Louis says resting a hip against the frame of the bathroom door and smoothing the creases on his Joy Division shirt with his hands.

“That was Harry.”

“I know,” Louis says, “Go wash up. Best not to keep him waiting.” Louis crooks a smile as his fingers toy with the gauze on his arm.

“We should— we should talk.”

“Let’s put a pin on it,” Louis says, heaving himself from where he’s leant at the doorframe, “Maybe until next Wednesday?”

“Right.” Zayn nods, because it’s all he could do, because it’s not as if he had anything to say, “Right.”

**Author's Note:**

> this is an on-going Zouis series under a large blanket alternate universe involving Zayn, Harry, and Louis that you'll know more about as I post more fic in this 'verse. I just needed to get this out of the way because it's been festering in my hard drive for a good month now. Also this way, I could move on devote my time working on Z/H's backstory and also what happens next in this Z/L series. 
> 
> FUN FACT: this was just supposed to be a one-off Zouis first time high!sex PWP that I started writing after a drunken night out when I got home and saw a picture on Tumblr (which I already had made into a draft-- [with tags and all, by the way](http://vicepresidents.tumblr.com/private/57112576534/tumblr_m5w4xt2zQH1rsnt97)). I have no idea how it escalated to this. 
> 
> thank you to the ageless [Rey](http://archiveofourown.org/users/profiterolling/pseuds/profiterolling) for being my beta and convincing me that this is a thing that needs to happen. shout out to [Ivy](http://archiveofourown.org/users/writeivywrite/pseuds/writeivywrite) for being so very patient with me since I've been on-again off-again talking about this with her for the past month.


End file.
